Cinema: New Picture, Feb. 10, 1941

Montana's isolationist Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler one day last month
threatened a legislative crackdown on cinemen for "carrying on a
violent propaganda campaign intending to incite the American people to . . .
war."

Quick to placate the troubled Senator were Hollywood spokesmen. Few
anti-Nazi films were in production. Reason:
from Warner Bros.' sensational Confessions of a Nazi Spy to Charlie
Chaplin's $2,000,000 satire, The Great Dictator, anti-Nazi films have
been disappointing at the box office. Reason: they were too depressing.